The related art is crowded with personal greeting cards and postcards which employ the use of personal photographs. It has been found that personal photographs are more appealing to the recipient rather than a pre-generated, mass-produced photograph, picture or illustration commonly found on greeting cards or postcards.
Presently, there exists self-operated vending machines which are adapted to take a person's picture and blend it with a background scene for subsequent application on to a postcard-like substrate. In the greeting card art, there exists various greeting cards having a window formed in one panel of the card within which a personal photograph can be mounted in a manner much like a picture frame. While greeting cards of this nature do provide a personal touch, it has been found that the pictures tend to move or fall out from within the window or frame on the card. Eventually, the picture becomes separated from the card, rendering the card a meaningless keepsake.
Technology is evolving towards the generation of pictures without the use of conventional film and chemical developing. Pictures are now being captured with digital cameras in which the image is stored "electronically." This electronic picture can be manipulated by a computer and printed by special laser and dye sublimation printers in a fraction of the time of chemical processing. The present invention is designed primarily to take advantage of this emerging technology by providing the means and vehicle for converting these laser and dye sublimation printouts into viable greeting cards, postcards, and the like in a highly cost-effective manner.